Flyers come from behind to clip Panthers

Noah Cates scored his second goal of the game with 5:51 remaining to propel the host Philadelphia Flyers to a 4-3 comeback win over the Florida Panthers on Monday.

Morgan Frost and Garnet Hathaway also scored for Philadelphia, which has won back-to-back games following a four-game skid. Samuel Ersson made 20 saves for the Flyers.

Sam Reinhart tallied a pair of goals for Florida, which suffered its first one-goal loss in regulation all season. Uvis Balinskis also scored for the Panthers, while Sergei Bobrovsky made 25 saves against his former team.

On the decisive sequence, Cates barely won a race to the puck at the red line, chipped it in the air, batted it forward with his glove and then lifted a backhander past Bobrovsky with two Panthers bearing down on him from behind.

Ersson preserved the lead with a wild sequence of saves with just over three minutes remaining. Florida pulled its goaltender down the stretch but was unable to get the equalizer.

Reinhart opened the scoring with a short-handed goal 7:59 into the contest, outmuscling Travis Konecny on a one-on-three rush and roofing a shot under the crossbar.

Balinskis made it 2-0 less than two minutes later, beating Ersson with a seemingly harmless shot from above the right circle.

Hathaway got Philadelphia on the board with the only goal of the second period, and then the hosts tied it up with a power-play goal 2:01 into the third. Travis Sanheim put a shot on net, and Cates buried the rebound to make it 2-2.

The lead didn't last long, however, as Reinhart put the visitors back in front with a power-play goal of his own less than two minutes later. Matthew Tkachuk found Reinhart in the slot with a nifty pass, and Reinhart blasted the puck past Ersson for his 27th goal of the season -- second most in the NHL behind the Edmonton Oilers' Leon Draisaitl.

Philadelphia drew even at 5:59 on another power-play goal, as Frost poked home a loose puck in front of the net.

--Field Level Media